Call to pay mayor more than €30k

A reduced salary of €30,000 for Cork city’s future lords mayor will not be enough to attract councillors to want the role, a former holder of the job has said.

Fianna Fáil councillor Terry Shannon said he appreciates there was a need to cut the pay associated with the year-long honorary position as chair of Cork City Council, which members had previously tied to the basic salary of TDs, currently over €87,000 a year.

But, he said, it also needs to be adequate enough for prospective candidates to be willing to give up their own job for a year. The reduction is in line with a new scale of maximum mayoral salaries set by Minister Phil Hogan, largely based on the size of each local authority.

“If we’re expecting someone to do all the work required as lord mayor, we have got to pay them an adequate wage, but the €30,000 figure is even lower than the average industrial wage,” said Mr Shannon, who was lord mayor in 2011 and 2012.

He called on the minister to reconsider the figures and consult with representative organisations for councillors.

It remains uncertain, however, who will become Cork’s lord mayor when the new council holds its first post-election meeting on Friday. With at least 16 votes needed, there is no clear grouping of parties which can secure the position, and only preliminary talks are understood to have taken place to date.

The new Cork City Council has 10 Fianna Fáil members, eight from Sinn Féin, five Fine Gael councillors and eight independents and other party representatives. Without an agreed arrangement on voting, most sides stress that any voting deal has to guarantee stability when it comes to passing a budget later this year.

The political uncertainty will be an added challenge for the first chief executive of Cork City Council, who could also be the first woman to hold the local authority’s top post when it is filled in the coming days. The name of Ann Doherty, who was made public hospitals chief in the mid-west region last year, emerged at the weekend as a likely successful candidate.

The job is being filled after the recent appointment of former city manager Tim Lucey as the top official in neighbouring Cork County Council. The titles of city and county manager are being replaced with the role of chief executive, as part of an overhaul of local government that has seen town councils abolished and the amalgamation of a number of local authorities after the recent elections.

Meanwhile, disagreement among 13 FF councillors over who should lead the party on the newly-created Limerick City and County Council was resolved over the weekend. They elected Michael Collins as group leader and James Collins as deputy last Thursday, but four others threatened to form an independent Fianna Fáil grouping over dissatisfaction with the outcome.

A meeting with general secretary Seán Dorgan led to a resolution, and all 13 will take their place on the FF benches at the council’s first meeting this week.